Today I had plan to work on longer distance circling game in the outdoor arena. To my disappointment, the outdoor arena was too wet and slippery. I found another way to challenge him by making the 12’ transitions much more precise and subtle.

Next I put on the driving lines and we began to work on zone 5 driving. First we played follow the rail just like in my previous lesson with Kaila.Kai kept drifting off the rail about 6'. I then remembered the saying that it is better to do less sooner rather than more later and I corrected Kai as soon as I saw him look to the inside.

Kai sometimes braces on the halter when we play in zone 5 so we worked on getting the rein cues as soft as possible. What was interesting was that Kai got very sensitive and he began to toss his head when I put a light feel on the rein. He had never tossed his head before, and I am not particularly sure why he was doing it.

He was also moving forward pretty tentatively and he had no rhythm and flow to his walk because he was anticipating I would ask him to stop. I realized that I overdid the walk-to-halt transitions so I asked him to trot on the rail and do figure eights to balance his go and whoa. Soon Kai was confident going forwards but his downwards transitions remained light.

I then decided we would play the sideways game. We had done sideways from zone five a few months earlier and it was very slow and unsure and we hadn’t practice it since. This time, however, it all came into place. Kai understood what I was asking him and he was moving sideways in both directions without a fence blocking him from walking forward. I was happy and excited and Kai understood that he was doing a very well.